January 2018 Feature Roundup

We all know New Year’s resolutions don’t work unless you do.

Now that 2018 is officially in full swing, we want to make sure you and your team have everything you need to manage more real estate leads, faster.

January’s updates included some major performance upgrades to make Follow Up Boss quicker and more efficient for our users. Expect to see some serious speed — even on mobile — as well as smart new improvements that make it way easier to pick up where you left off, without skipping a beat.

Because boss-level lead management is all about speed, focus and a seamless experience for you, your team and your leads.

Highlights

1. Android Updates
2. Call Transfers
3. Deleting Deals
4. Search for a Follow Up Boss Dialer
5. Improved Dashboard
6. Deal Reporting Updates
7. Fix for Bad Appointment Dates

New Features

Exciting new updates for Follow Up Boss on Android!

In January, we added some killer features to our Android app to make following up on the go super quick and easy.

(You can grab the latest version here!)

So what’s new?

Well, we added some pretty sweet stability and speed improvements as well as a brand new feedback tool so that you can let us know right that minute if you’re ever experiencing any issues inside the app.

Next time you spot a bug, all you have to do is give your phone a shake.

That’s right. Just give it a shake and a feedback dialogue will pop up so you can immediately let us know if you’ve spotted any issues with the app.

We also added a new feature so that the app will now automatically open on the last menu tab used.

It’s easy to get interrupted when you’re working on the go. Now you can pick up exactly where you left off and get back to your leads faster.

The chat screen also got a little prettier and easier to navigate with some minor UX improvements, plus we add a spell-checker! After all, typos happen — especially when you’re running around between appointments.

Last but not least, you now have the ability to send yourself test notifications.

(Psst, soon you’ll be able to see this feature on your Devices page within the desktop app — keep an eye out for that!)

Not seeing these changes yet? Grab the latest Android update here.

Faster iPhone app

Don’t worry iPhone users, we didn’t forget you!

We’ve released an important update to the Follow Up Boss iPhone app which massively improves speed and performance over cellular connections as well as slower WiFi networks.

We know nothing’s more frustrating than feeling like your lead management game is stuck in the dial-up era. We’re committed to keeping your mobile follow ups just as awesome as your desktop follow ups! Stay tuned as we continue to improve your mobile experience.

Need the update? Get it now!

Call Transfers

For those of you with our calling feature, you can now transfer calls to other team members!

Now your ISAs and junior agents can pick up right where you left off and offer an awesomely seamless experience to users.

With the click of a button you initiate what we call a ‘warm transfer’ that places the lead on hold while you privately explain the call to your team member.

Want the full 411 on call transfers? Get the step-by-step here.

Deleting Deals

Back by popular demand!

Follow Up Boss users can now delete deals again. In the deal view there is a ‘Delete Deal’ link in the bottom left corner. Just hit that and it’s gone!

Here are a couple other upgrades we made last month:

• We fixed loading custom fields for accounts that had over 100 custom fields.
• We improved the design of our integrations page.
• We also improved some styling to the login screen.

Improvements

Searching for a Follow Up Boss dialer

When choosing a Follow Up Boss dialer number, you’ll want a number that shows a specific city on the caller ID. To make this easier, we’ve made it possible to search by 6 digits, instead of just the area code.

Check it out!

Addresses default to account country, eh.

Now when you go to add a new address to a contact, the default will be based on the account country. So, if you are Canadian, it will default to Canada.

Also, an extra little verbiage change for Canadians, if you select Canada as the country, we now show “Province” and “Postal” opposed to “State” and “Zipcode”.

Improved Dashboard

We made some serious updates to the Follow Up Boss dashboard last month to make it way easier to move from one task to the next and pick up your workflow right where you left off.

Here are some of the awesome dashboard improvements we made in January.

Dashboard Real-time updating

We added real-time updating so you always know where you stand with your daily follow up!

We also optimized the real-time updating so that you’re always getting the most accurate view possible, even if you on a slower internet connection.

Dashboard links

We’ve also made the links to Contacts actual anchor tags. This means you can simply ctrl+click or cmd+click to seamlessly open your contacts in a new tab. Boom.

Appointments and Tasks tabs in the Calendar

When you click on the appointments chart from the dashboard, you will now go to the Appointments tab in the calendar.

Follow Up Boss now remembers either the Tasks tab or the Appointments tab you were last on, so when you go to the calendar you can pick up right where you left off.

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Deal reporting updates

We updated the Agent Activity Report and Lead Sources Report so that deal commission and archived deals are now included to give you a more complete picture of every agent’s performance.

Calendar remember last tab and more!

We made a slew of improvements around Calendar and Tasks.

First, we now default the filter to “Me”. Don’t worry, you can change this if you want!

Next, we remember which tab you leave. For example, if you go to “Today’s tasks”, when you go away and then click on the “Calendar” menu item in the top, you’ll go back to “Today’s tasks”. For users who prefer the Tasks tabs but hate having to go through the Calendar screen to get there, this little upgrade will remove some major headaches from your workflow!

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We also fixed a bug when creating appointments. Sometimes your form would get reset when you were crafting your appointment. Not fun. This will no longer happen.

Due to these awesome Calendar improvements, there will also be a little less lag while loading all events and navigating inside the calendar.

Action plan text message improvements on Android

We fixed an issue with the way text messages sent out via Action Plan were displayed on Android devices. Occasionally, these would appear on the left side of the screen as if they were sent by the lead — they now appear on the right side as they should.

And just to keep things super clear, we also added the words “via action plan”, next to the timestamp beneath the message.

You can grab the latest Android update right here.

My Next Task speed increase

Sorting by ‘My Next Task’ just got WAY faster. We made some serious speed optimizations, as well as a slight speed increase across the board when loading people on the people table.

More speed improvements for mobile

We’ve updated specific API interactions with our mobile apps to make them faster and more awesome. More of these changes are coming over the next couple of weeks as we strive to make the mobile experience super speedy.

Performance improvements for tags

We made some optimizations to how we fetch tags that will result in a major performance boost for customers with 500+ tags in their account. Now you can keep generating leads like a total rockstar, without worrying about slowing down your loading time on the people table.

Extract address parts from street address

We now automatically pull out the city, state, and zip code portions of an address if the full address is contained in the street field. Because manual entry takes up WAY too much time.

Improved releases

We have upgraded some behind-the-scenes code so that when we do a deploy, if portions of code haven’t changed, they will no longer have to re-download this code.

What this really means for users is that when your page reloads it should reload a bit faster for the majority of our releases. You’ll get all our awesome upgrades and updates faster and more seamlessly as soon as they’re rolled out.

Tooltip improvements

We also increased the speed in certain areas of the app regarding the tooltips and made the tooltips a bit more reliable when interacting with them.

Here are some other improvements and fixes we made:

• We made performance improvements for various places where we retrieve counts for emails throughout the app.
• We fixed an issue where the contact on call bar could lose the person’s name in the middle of an outgoing call.
• We fixed an issue where non-admin users sorting by My Next Task were sometimes not able to see contacts with no tasks.

Fixes

Fix for bad appointment dates

For some appointments, there was an issue where date might be corrupt causing the calendar to crash. Not cool.

We fixed this and wrote tests around it so we won’t encounter this issue again.

Dotloop templates

There was a bug when creating a deal where if you selected a dotloop profile that didn’t require templates but had templates, we wouldn’t show you the list of templates. Argh, right? Don’t worry. This has now been fixed!

Google Calendar connection bug fix

When reconnecting to Google in Follow Up Boss, there were instances where Follow Up Boss would not correctly connect to Google Calendar. So for some users after they reconnected Follow Up Boss would no longer sync their calendar, or sync the previously connected Google Calendar account. Yikes.

This has been fixed, both for new connections and for all users whose calendar connection wasn’t set up correctly. We can’t have you missing appointments!

Zillow Group email parser updated

Zillow Group (which also includes Trulia and HotPads) recently released a new email format for rental leads. We’ve updated our email parser so these leads will continue to be automatically picked up in Follow Up Boss.

  in text messages

We just released a fix for an issue where html entities like   could show up in text messages sent via action plans. We’ve released protections in the areas where we send out text messages to prevent this problem from popping up again.

Call transfer canceling fix

We released a fix for a bug where if you transferred a call and heard a voicemail, then tried to cancel it, both you and the lead could still hear the voicemail. Now you’ll be able to cancel your calls and move right along.

Subject switching and Chart memory leak

When composing an email some people might experience an issue where the focus goes to the subject box. We finally tracked down the issue and were able to fix it!

There was also a problem where the charts on the dashboard and reporting had a memory leak, causing some browsers to crash if they were left on those pages for a period of time. We’re happy to report this has also been fixed!

Calendar custom fields and email timeline refresh

For a while there, custom fields weren’t showing up. Those are now back on the calendar!

Also, there was an issue where after you sent an email it wouldn’t show up reliably on the timeline. Both of these are now fixed!

Calendar not showing Tasks

Due to some of the other performance improvements, there was a short window of time where tasks were removed from the calendar. This has been fixed and should be back to normal!

There were a few date discrepancies on deals, this also has been resolved.

Future Tasks and duplicate contacts fix

For some users who had more than 100 tasks, you might not have been able to see your first tasks. That’s because we were fetching tasks oldest to newest, so the initial display on those tasks might not be the most recent tasks.

We also fixed an issue where when you create a contact from the search box, depending on where you clicked, you might create 2 contacts. This is now resolved as well.

Finally, we also added some metrics to our live updating system to help us better monitor performance.

Fix for lead routes by tag

There was an issue with lead routing by tag whenever an extra space was present at the end of the tag. We’ve corrected this issue so new leads will always route correctly.

Daily Hot Sheet email task link

When we created the daily hot sheet email, we didn’t have the Task’s page. We have now updated this link in the email. So if you’re a Follow Up Boss user, the task link should take you to a better location within the app.

New Task filter bug fix

There was a bug where viewing the people screen for another agent (under the team member dropdown) and then filtering ‘My Next Task’ column by ‘is empty’ or ‘is not empty’ would result in the people table not properly filtering these people and empty and non-empty next tasks would show.

This has now been fixed!

Filtering inbox by calls

There was an error for certain users where the inbox would just keep spinning when it was filtered only by ‘Calls’. This has now been fixed.

Follow Up Boss saving a person details

We also had a rare issue that would prevent people from removing an assigned lender. This is now fixed.

Also, when you tried to save an email with an invalid email address, we were not reporting that back to the user. This is also now fixed!

We also made these minor bug patches:

• Fixed an issue with the avatar being aligned on the dashboard in Safari
• Fixed a bug with appointments display getting pushed over
• Email editor can now be expanded both vertical and horizontal
• Fix for some rare search issues that have been happening have several days
• Fixed a display issue with the create date was overflowing its box
• Made the tooltip colors in the modal more consistent with other tooltips in our app
• Increased the width of the close date input when editing it in a deal
• Updated some FAQ copy within the import screen
• Desktop notifications should no longer trigger a page reload

Time is money — and we want our users to be able to spend theirs wisely!

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